


Me (Doug), him (Eiffel) and them (the crew)

by the_empty_man



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Finale, and also general trauma stuff, diary entries, disconnected sections, imposter syndrome, so obviously spoilers, trigger warning for discussion of suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-04
Updated: 2018-02-16
Packaged: 2019-02-28 06:24:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13265571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_empty_man/pseuds/the_empty_man
Summary: Extracts from Doug's notebook as he tries to work out who he is, who he used to be and who the people round him think he is.





	1. Chapter 1

I've decided to start writing things down. Minkowski found me this notebook and a pen. I want to record everything I learn about Doug Eiffel. If I'm going to get better, if I'm going to learn who I am, it might help to set things down on paper. And even though Hera said my ability to form new memories hasn't been affected, I'm not taking any chances; I want to get my experiences down on paper. Besides, it'll give me something to do on the journey back to Earth.

It probably would be more typical of Doug Eiffel to make an audio diary than a written one. But I don't really feel like talking to myself. And this is more private. I don't want any risk of the crew overhearing.

***

Renée's been staring at me sadly from across the navigations room. She does that a lot when she thinks I'm not looking. I can tell Eiffel meant a lot to her. She looks at me, but she sees him. Or rather, she looks at me, but she's searching for him. She looks at me the way you might look at a photograph of a dead friend. I don't enjoy feeling like a gravestone.

***

I've had to put a lot of trust in the people on this ship. Everything I know about myself and my life is what they've told me. I’ve had to take their words for it. They could tell me anything and I'd believe it. I've got nothing else to go on. Sometimes I worry it's all some ridiculous joke or sick experiment. I might have lost my memories, but I'm pretty sure that all this stuff about aliens and plant monsters and deadly viruses is not normal. My instinct is that the people on this ship wouldn't lie to me. They seem honest. They seem like they care. 

***

 "Well," Hera said, when I asked whether Isabel got on with Eiffel. "She found you a bit of a pain sometimes, but she cares about you a lot."

 "Oh, I thought she hated him or something."

 "Of course not! Why would you think that?"

 "She never meets my eyes. She keeps leaving the room when I come in. She grimaces when I talk."

 "Eiffel, she never hated you. You were- You are her friend! She risked her life for you multiple times!"

 "Then why does she avoid me?" I sounded more bitter than I intended.

 "She's lost a lot of people." I know that already. She's watched more people die than all the people I can remember. "I think its hard for her to see you..." She searched for the best way to phrase it. "...To see you so _different_." No wonder she doesn't like being around me; I'm a reminder that he's gone.

***

I think of myself as "Doug". I think of him, the man in the logs, the man I was before all this, as "Eiffel". It helps me keep things straight in my head, to give us separate names.

Renée always calls me Doug now, but from time to time she catches herself almost saying Eiffel. She has this obsession with first names. She insists everyone calls her Renée. I think it's part of her trying to be normal again. The Captain tends to bristle when she gets called Isabel, but Renée does it anyway. She called Jacobi Daniel exactly once and he threatened to blow up the Urania. Lovelace and Jacobi still call everyone by their last names.

Hera alternates between referring to me as Eiffel and as Doug. Occasionally, when it's just us two, she calls me 'Darling' or 'Sweetheart', which is oddly comfortable.

***

It's strange. From what I've gathered, Eiffel spent a lot of time wishing he was someone else. But what I want most of all now is to be Doug Eiffel again. I know he wasn't always a good person, but I can't help wondering what he'd do in each situation.

I've been practicing his voice by listening to the logs and repeating phrases back. This morning Hera interrupted me as I was floating in front of the mirror repeating _'I am Communications Officer Doug Eiffel_ ' over and over to myself, trying to work out whether the name sounded the same as how he said it.

"Eiffel?" Hera said, catching me off guard. "Are you okay?" I'm not. Not okay, that is. I don't know whether or not I'm Eiffel.

"Do you think I sound the same as him?" I asked her, before I could stop myself. Hera sighed.

"Eiffel, you are him. You don't need to worry about trying to impersonate yourself. Just talk how you talk." I don't think she's okay either.

***

I wish Jacobi would talk to me properly, not just in sarcastic remarks and snide comments. I owe him a lot. 

I want to talk to him about that moment when Isabel fainted and Hera went offline and Renée collapsed and I was alone in an unknown place with the floating bodies of two strangers. I was so afraid. For all I knew they were dead. The station wouldn't stop shaking. I knew we had to move but I didn't know where to go. I kept shaking Renée. I knew she was the Commander. I was sure she'd know what to do. I yelled myself hoarse calling for help, but I didn't know whether there was anyone else on the ship. I started trying to carry Renée and Lovelace but my limbs felt like jelly and I had no idea where to go.

That's when Jacobi arrived. "What the hell's going on Eiffel? We need to move!"

"Please, I don't know what's..." I think I broke down then. I started blubbering, from relief or fear or confusion.

"Right, I don't know what the fuck has happened to you," Jacobi snapped. "But we're getting the hell out of here! You grab Lovelace, I'll take Minkowski." He picked Minkowski up roughly in his arms and I did the same with Lovelace.

Then he was off, running down long metal corridors. I followed, but struggled to keep up, trying to haul Isabel's dead weight with my weak arms. At one point I reached a crossroads and I couldn't see him anymore. I was lost.

"Where are you?" I called out.

"For God's sake Eiffel!" I heard his frustrated yell from the corridor on my left. I followed the sound. Eventually we found our way onto the Urania. I laid Lovelace down and slumped with my head in my hands.

"So, what happened?" he said, once he'd launched us safely away from the Hephaestus and put Renée onto a drip. I kept repeating that I didn't know, but it was hard to get the words out. He asked more aggressively, and I started hyperventilating.

"Come on, you need to snap out of it now, Eiffel. Now is not the time to fall apart," he said, exasperated.

I managed to calm down enough to ask him who he was and what he was doing on the Hephaestus. I think that was when he realised I wasn't just disoriented. He gave me an odd look.

"Holy fuck, you really don't know anything do you?" I shook my head. "Alright then." He took a deep breath. "Well, I'm Jacobi." He put out his hand to shake it. I don't think he exactly realised he did that. He's hardly spoken to me since.

***

Isabel has been avoiding me less in the last few days. She seems to be making an effort to start conversations with me and address me directly. I guess she's adjusting to me being me instead of Eiffel. I wonder whether Hera told her that I thought she hated Eiffel. Sometimes I get the feeling that whenever I'm not there, they're talking about me- or about him.

  
She told me that she understands how it feels to not know whether you're the same person. She's been living under the shadow of another version of herself for years.

  
Of course, our situations aren't the same. She's got the original Isabel Lovelace's mind but just in a different body. I've got the original Doug Eiffel body but without his mind. I wonder which is worse.

  
Isabel told me not to fixate so much on who he was, that I should focus on who I am now. Easier said than done, I thought. "Yeah, it's shitty," she said. "And it's always going to be shitty. But I'm here for you. We're here for you." I appreciate that.

***

I really need to stop listening to those logs. I'm making things worse. I'm hurting people. Earlier, for some stupid reason, I called Renée ‘Captain Kirk’, which I've heard him say a few times in the recordings.

Renée gasped. "Eiffel, did you just make a pop culture reference?" She was looking at me with a fierce spark of hope in her eyes. I'd never seen her face look like that before, at least not that I remember. I've never seen her look that happy.

"Yes, but-" I tried to tell her that I don't even know what Captain Kirk means, but I could hardly bear to kill that hint of joy.

"Hera, is it possible his memories could still be in there somewhere?"

"I don't see how-" Hera began, uncertainly.

"No, no." I cut her off. “I... I didn't remember that reference." Renée looked at me, confused. "I heard it in the logs," I explained.

"Oh. Oh. Okay Doug," she said, quietly. I could see her deflate. The hope in her eyes died. "Don't worry about it."

"I'm sorry, Renée. I didn't mean to..."

"No, it's okay." She took a few deep breaths. "I shouldn't have jumped to conclusions."

  
I hugged her. She hugged me back like it was a natural normal thing for her and Eiffel. "You miss him," I muttered. Her hug tightened until I could barely breathe.

"Fucking hell, I miss him." There was a hint of a sob in her voice. She doesn't deserve this pain. But how can I help her grieve when I'm the one she's grieving?

***

Apparently, Eiffel promised to take Hera to a beach. To Pizza Hut. To Hollywood. To his favourite cinema. To a particular Doughnut shop. To a park with 'the greatest rope swing ever'. I like lying in my cot and listening to her recount everything he told her about Earth. It's the closest I can get to the intimacy she and Eiffel had.

Still, it makes me sad. He thought he'd be able to introduce her to all of these places on Earth that he loved, but I'm as clueless about them as she is. More so even. We will go to them all though. I won't break Eiffel's promises. I think I owe her that much. Together, we'll experience Earth for the first time.


	2. A Ship of Stories and Ghosts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More snippets from the Urania's journey back to Earth.  
> Doug learns to listen. He's better at it than Eiffel, given he's got much less to say.

Hera refuses to play me the logs now. She told me I was developing an unhealthy obsession. She was right, as usual. I kept trying to stop, but I can't help being drawn back into hearing his voice, my-voice-but-not-my-voice, into hearing him joke and struggle and argue with the others. 

I can pretty much recite the logs from memory now anyway. Sometimes I do play them out in my head when I'm bored. I think the rest of the crew have voices from the past echoing round their minds too. Jacobi sometimes mutters to Maxwell or Kepler under his breath. Renée sometimes gets a faraway glazed look in her eyes. Isabel sometimes stares fixedly at patches of empty air. This ship is full of ghosts. And I'm one of them.

***

I guess Hera could see that I was getting bored without the logs to keep me occupied. Or perhaps she was just desperate to stop me nagging her to let me listen to them. But for whatever reason, she's started telling me stories from the Hephaestus.

Of course, the crew have told me all the important information, the stories that I needed know so I could understand how I got here. But there's a lot of mundane gaps in between the logs and the life-threatening situations. Theres a lot I didn't know. Like about the first talent show. Or how Eiffel caused Renée to need several toes amputated. Or the pranks Eiffel and Lovelace pulled on the si-5.

When Hera tells me about these things, its not anything like listening to the logs. It doesn't feel like wallowing in the past. It's just listening to my friend tell a funny anecdote. She's got a knack for story-telling that I wouldn't have expected from an AI. I know she'd be able to impersonate everyone completely accurately, but she does ridiculous exaggerated voices to make me laugh. Warren Kepler can't have talked _that_ slowly!

  
***

  
I've only recently realised how strange it is that we're on the Si-5's ship. Jacobi's spends most of his time in the same quarters he had on the way up to the Hephaestus, back when he was still on Goddard's side. God knows how he feels about that.

  
I've got what used to be Alana Maxwell's room. I try not to think too much about how I'm sleeping in a dead woman's cot. A woman I knew, but dont remember. A woman Renée killed. If there were any personal effects in here, Jacobi took them out before I moved in. I'm glad of that.

***

  
Renée interrupted Hera's story-telling this afternoon. She likes to come and check on me, as if she's worried that if she doesn't see me for 15 minutes I'll disappear or asphyxiate or something.

We heard her voice at the door, asking to come in, cutting Hera off half-way through re-enacting a particularly savage argument between Eiffel and his commander.

"I just wanted to check you're alright," she said when she entered. She must have heard voices, because she thought I was listening to the logs again.

Hera reassured Renée that she wasn't letting me listen to the logs, but the commander still seemed suspicious. She hovered in the doorway, looking at me like she was trying to read my mind. Eventually Hera must have realised Renée wasn't going to leave.

"I was just telling Doug about the time he almost set the air supply on fire," she explained.

  
"Which one?" Renée said, sardonically, prompting Hera to continue the story. She ended up staying and listening for most of the afternoon, although she hovered in the doorway the whole time, as if she was planning to leave at any moment.

  
She even started interrupting, blurting out  _I did not say that!_ and _Hera, you're twisting the truth!_ and _What really happened was..._ Hera made a comment about how she very much doubted that the commander's unreliable human memory had a more accurate account of events than her own state-of-the-art thousand-terabyte data banks, but she let Renée tell her version. 

***

  
I was woken up in the middle of last night by the clunk of my door closing.

  
"Who's there?" I groaned in the direction of the sound and heard Renée mutter _Oh shit_. I asked her what was going on, slightly panicked, thinking that something awful had happened. She reassured me that nothing was wrong.

  
I got Hera to tell me the time and turn the lights on. Renée was standing sheepishly by the door in her Goddard-issued sleepsuit.

  
"What are you doing in my room at 3:43am if nothing's wrong?" I asked. Of course, there aren't really days and nights in space, but we operate on Canaveral time.

  
"Just thought I'd check you were okay," Renée said in a forced casual tone.

  
"Nightmares?" I asked. There was a pause before she answered a begrudging yes. I've guessed for a while that she has trouble sleeping. I've caught her falling asleep at the navigations desk more than once, although she'd deny it. In fact, I'm pretty sure me and Pryce are the only ones on this ship who sleep soundly. Of course, Hera doesn't need to sleep. Neither does Isabel really, although she pretends. Jacobi obviously needs sleep, but judging by the circles under his eyes, he isn't getting much.

  
"Do you want to talk about it?" She's told me before now that somehow she finds it easier to open up to me than she did with Eiffel. One thing I can still do is listen.

  
"Doug, if you ever have bad thoughts, you'll tell me, right? Or Hera?" It took me a while to cotton on to what she meant by bad thoughts. After everything that happened, what she's most anxious about isn't returning to Earth or the prospect of repercussions from Goddard or any of the many dangerous possibilities involved in flying an unfamiliar spaceship across lightyears, but the fear that I'm going to throw myself out of an airlock or something. I told her she didn't need to worry. I hate to think that I'm a large part of her stress.

  
I'm not going anywhere. For the crew's sake, if not for my own. I wouldnt leave them behind, not when they've done so much for me. For Eiffel's sake, if not for my own. I've got to get back to Earth to do the things he didn't get to.

  
"Is that what the nightmares were about?" I said, before I could stop myself. I wish I hadn't. It wasnt fair to make her tell me. Apparently last night wasnt the first time she's dreamt that she's gone into my quarters in the morning and found me dead, with a note floating above me. She told me she usually just asks Hera to check my vitals when she wakes up, but tonight that wasnt enough to reassure her.

  
"I don't know what I'd do if something happened to you. I always thought Eiffel had... tendencies," she admitted. That shouldn't have surprised me. I've heard how he launched himself into the star and injected himself with poisons and flew straight at a space station. Even the choice he made to sacrifice his memories makes more sense if he was suicidal. That's not a good thought, but its true. Sometimes there is a little voice at the back of my head, but so long as I've got the crew around me, its pretty quiet.

  
"Hey, I'm not going to hurt myself, I swear. I've got to stick around and bother you," I said. She gave a small smile.

  
***

  
Isabel has started joining our story-telling sessions. She seemed reluctant at first, having been dragged along by Renée. She tried valiantly to get Jacobi involved, but I think he told her in no uncertain terms that he had no interest in her group bonding activities.

  
Lovelace is possibly an even better story-teller than Hera. She tells us stories about her old crew, about the stupid arguments she would have with Lambert and how Fisher would try to cheer them up and everything they went through together on the first Hephaestus mission. I know more about Kuan Hui and Victoire Fourier than I do about my own daughter or about my parents.

  
Eiffel used to be the story-teller, endlessly spewing weird anecdotes and bad punchlines. I am not a story-teller. I am a man without any stories. But I'm okay with being a listener now. A 'dear listener', even.

  
***

The closer we get to Earth, the more tension there is on this ship. Somehow, that planet that's meant to be home for us is utterly terrifying. And not just for me and Hera. Renée, Isabel and Jacobi are on edge too. I guess it's been a long time and a lot has changed since they left.

  
I'm scared to arrive back on Earth. I dont remember what it feels like to be held down by gravity, or to breathe non-manufactured air, or to have more than five people within light years of me. Sometimes I feel like I was born on the Hephaestus, with Renée and Isabel looking down at me.

  
Today I finally plucked up the courage to ask Renée what's going to happen when we get back to Earth.

"Your guess is as good as mine, Doug." There's not many questions she could say that in response to.

"I mean, what are you going to do? I know I said that stuff about finding out together, but you've got a husband, a life to go back to... I'll understand if that life doesn't include me," I said, needing to get that stuff out in the open.

  
Renée took a deep breath, ready to make a speech. She's obviously been thinking about this a lot. "Look, I don't know whether Dominic's moved on, whether he'll let me back into his life, whether he'll let me bring you lot into his life." She sighed. "But there's some things I'm certain of." She looked me right in the eyes and I could feel that certainty in her gaze. "If I have to choose, protecting you is more important than being with him. I won't move back in with him unless I can keep an eye on you. I'm not going to leave you behind."

  
I told her she didn't have to protect me, but she shook her head. "You're not just crew, Eiffel." I supressed an urge to correct her for calling me that. "You're family." Despite all the stories I've heard, I don't know what Doug Eiffel did to deserve all the care she has for him. I only hope I can try to earn it.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! (I hope I'm not the only one who still thinks about Wolf 359 on a daily basis even though it's been almost 2 months since the finale!) Let me know if you want me to continue this with their arrival back on Earth...

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! I'd love it if you could leave a comment!  
> I hope to continue this further.  
> If you want to join me in failing to get over Wolf359, I'm @the-empty-man on Tumblr.


End file.
